Ethics policy 

The Journal of Hydroelectric Engineering is sponsored by the China Hydropower Engineering Society, approved by the China Association for Science and Technology. The journal is committed to meeting the international ethical standards at all stages of the publication process. In particular，we will follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on dealing with potential acts of misconduct.

1．Editors responsibility

1)  Editors should handle all submissions in a fair and objective way without and discrimination, so that articles are considered and accepted solely on their academic merit.

2)  In order to discourage and prevent misconduct on the part of editors, an ‘avoidance’ process will be adopted if any conflicts of interest are involved. The Journal will discourage and prevent misconduct on the part of editors by having processes for editors’ conflicts of interest and publishing conflicts of interest for all decision-making editors.

3)  Editors should follow the procedures suggested by COPE in the event of complaints of an ethical or conflict nature. Authors should be given a reasonable opportunity to respond to any complaints. All complaints should be investigated no matter when the original publication was approved. Documentation associated with any such complaints should be retained.

2．Reviewers responsibility

1)  Reviewers should contribute to the decision-making process, and to assist in improving the quality of the published paper by reviewing the manuscript objectively. Any information supplied by the editor should remain confidential.

2)  Reviewers should inform the editor if any published or submitted content is substantially similar to that under review. They should alert the editor if there is any potential conflicts of interest.

3．Authors responsibility

1)  Author(s) should ensure that the work of any manuscript submitted to the Journal of Hydroelectric Engineering should not be officially published in print, online or any other media. Also, the manuscript is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

2)  Author(s) should ensure that the data and results of any manuscript submitted to our journal are concrete and reliable, and no fabricated or manipulated data, no dispute in copyright. The research process should conform to the relevant ethics. The manuscript should contain necessary details and reference to allow peers to repeat the work. The author(s) may be asked to provide the original data for editorial review and any reasonable requests for data should not be denied. The author(s) should notify the editorial board in a timely manner when they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, and cooperate with the editor board to retract or correct the paper.

3)  Author(s) should ensure that proper citations to other works are given in the manuscript. Plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) is not allowed. The journal will use software to screen the submitted manuscript for possible plagiarism and overlap. Manuscripts with excessive overlap will be rejected during the first stage of review process.

4)  Author(s) should ensure that no confidential information is involved in the manuscript. Advertising or other business promotion is not allowed either.

5)  Authorship should be limited to those who have made a real contribution to the work, and there should be no dispute in the order of authors as well as their affiliations. Acknowledgment should be properly given to those who have contributed to the research or project but did not merit being listed as an author. Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage is not encouraged.

6)  If there is misconduct in the work, the manuscript will be rejected if it is in the reviewing process. If the paper has already been published, erratum or even retraction will occur depending on the nature and severity of the infraction. The authors’ institutions will also be informed once the published paper is retracted.